Americans have had a love affair with french fries for a very long time. In fact, Thomas Jefferson is credited with serving the first french fries in America in 1802 at the White House.

The bad news is that we may need to find a fast food with a lot less fat and salt. A new study has discovered a link between frequent eating of french fries and an increased risk of premature death.

French Fries Aren’t Healthy — If You Didn’t Already Know That – AARP

Researchers found that fried potato consumption ‘appears to be associated with an increased mortality risk.’

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The research took place over eight years and was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The study analyzed the dietary habits of 4,400 people ages 45 to 79, focusing on how often participants ate potatoes ­—­ fried or not.

Researchers found that people who consumed fried potatoes ­— whether french fries, tater tots or hash browns ­— at least twice a week could more than double their risk of premature death. And the most shocking result was that, by the end of the study, 236 participants had died.

“I don’t think they died from eating french fries alone, but most likely the habit meant they also indulged in other high-risk eating behaviors,” nutritionist Beth Warren, the author of Living a Real Life With Real Food, told Yahoo Beauty. “It seems that those people in the study who consumed fried potatoes at least twice per week were more likely to have an overall unhealthy lifestyle.”

Researchers emphasized that the increased mortality risk appears to be related to frequent consumption of fried potatoes, an association not found with eating potatoes that were not fried. “Additional studies in larger sample sizes should be performed to confirm if overall potato consumption is associated with higher mortality risk,” they said.

President Donald Trump threatened North Korea “with fire and fury like the world has never seen” on Tuesday after reports suggested the communist country has mastered one of the final hurdles to being able to strike the United States with a nuclear missile.

Trump’s stern words to the camera at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, sought to match the gravity of North Korea’s newfound ability to wed its nuclear warhead with its missiles, including those that may be able to hit the American mainland. The isolated and impoverished dictatorship has strived for decades to match its bombastic military rhetoric with the technical prowess to threaten the U.S. and its Asian allies, and the pace of its breakthroughs is already having far-reaching consequences for stability in the Pacific and beyond.

The nuclear advances were detailed in an official Japanese assessment and a Washington Post story that cited U.S. intelligence officials and a confidential Defense Intelligence Agency report. The U.S. now puts the North Korean arsenal at up to 60 nuclear weapons, more than double most assessments by independent experts, according to the Post’s reporting.

“North Korea had best not make any more threats to the United States,” said a stern-looking Trump, seated with his arms crossed and with his wife beside him. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

“He has been very threatening beyond a normal state. And as I said they will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

The remarks appeared scripted, with Trump glancing at a paper in front of him. They evoked President Harry Truman’s announcement of the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, in which he warned of “a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”

The Trump administration considers North Korea to be America’s greatest national security threat and tensions have steadily escalated this year.

Pyongyang had threatened the U.S. in response to the U.N. Security Council’s adoption this weekend of new, tougher sanctions spearheaded by Washington. The sanctions followed groundbreaking long-range missile tests last month that showed the North could potentially reach the continental United States with its missiles. The newly revealed U.S. intelligence assessment indicates those missiles can carry nuclear warheads.

Denouncing the U.N. sanctions through state media, the North warned: “We will make the U.S. pay by a thousand-fold for all the heinous crimes it commits against the state and people of this country.”

For North Korea, having a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike America would be the ultimate guarantee against invasion by its superpower adversary.

It is an ambition decades in the making. North Korea began producing fissile material for bombs in the early 1990s and conducted its first nuclear test explosion in 2006. Four subsequent nuclear tests, the latest a year ago, have accelerated progress on miniaturizing a device – something North Korea already claimed it could do. Over that span, multiple U.S. presidents have tried and failed to coax or pressure Pyongyang into abandoning its nuclear ambitions.

The secrecy of the North’s nuclear program and the underground nature of its test explosions make it very difficult to properly assess its claims. But the new assessments from Japan and the U.S. suggest that doubts over the North’s abilities are receding.

In an annual report, Japan’s Defense Ministry on Tuesday concluded that “it is possible that North Korea has achieved the miniaturization of nuclear weapons and has developed nuclear warheads.” Japan, a key U.S. ally, is a potential, front-line target of North Korean aggression.

The Post story, citing unnamed U.S. intelligence officials, went further. It said the Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, completed last month, assessed North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, including by intercontinental missiles.

Officials at the agency wouldn’t comment Tuesday. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence also wouldn’t discuss the report.

It’s unclear how North Korea’s new capabilities will immediately affect how the U.S. approaches the country’s regular missile launches and occasional nuclear tests. The U.S. military has never attempted to shoot a North Korean missile out of the sky, deeming all previous tests to pose no threat to the United States. The U.S. could weigh military action if the threat perception changes.

The calculation of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal at 60 bombs exceeds other assessments, which range from around one dozen to about 30 weapons. The assessments are typically an estimate of the amount of plutonium and enriched uranium North Korea has in its inventory rather than how much of that material has been weaponized. It’s unclear how many, if any, miniaturized warheads North Korea has built.

Last month’s tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles highlighted the growing threat. While those missiles landed at sea near Japan, both were fired at highly lofted angles. Analysts said the weapons could reach Alaska, Los Angeles or Chicago if fired at a normal, flattened trajectory.

Not all technical hurdles have been overcome with the missiles, however. North Korea is still believed to lack expertise to allow a missile to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere without burning up. Another work-in-progress: the ability to strike targets with accuracy.

After the launches, missile expert John Schilling concluded the intercontinental missile still needed another year or two to achieve “full operational capability.”

Dan Coats, Trump’s national intelligence director, said at a security conference last month that the North’s July 4 missile re-entered the atmosphere. According to Schilling, the July 28 missile appeared to disintegrate before reaching ground.

U.S. officials have been debating for years North Korea’s progress on miniaturizing a nuclear device to fit on a missile.

As early as 2013, Pyongyang announced it had tested a “smaller and light A-bomb unlike the previous ones, yet with great explosive power,” implying miniaturization. In 2016, leader Kim Jong Un was pictured next to a spherical, silvery object said to be a nuclear device. Behind him was an apparent intercontinental missile. Months later, and a nuclear test later, it claimed it could mass produce the missile-ready warheads.

Someone apparently threw a bomb through the window of a suburban Minneapolis mosque on Saturday as people were preparing for morning prayers, damaging the imam’s office but not causing any injuries, authorities said.

Minneapolis police said a preliminary investigation shows a destructive device caused the explosion, “in violation of federal law,” and that the FBI has taken the lead in the investigation. An FBI spokesman didn’t return a phone message Saturday seeking details about the investigation.

The blast happened at around 5 a.m. at the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, south of Minneapolis. Worshippers managed to extinguish the blaze before firefighters arrived, according to a statement from the Muslim American Society of Minnesota.

A witness reported seeing something being thrown at the imam’s office window as about a dozen people gathered for morning prayers, said Asad Zaman, the society’s director. Zaman described it as a firebombing, the Star Tribune reported.

One worshipper saw a pickup truck speeding away afterward, said Mohamed Omar, the center’s executive director. He said the mosque, which primarily serves people from the area’s large Somali community, occasionally receives threatening calls and emails.

“It was 5 a.m.,” Omar told the newspaper. “The whole neighborhood was calm. People were supposed to be sleeping, that’s how peaceful this should be. I was shocked to learn this happened.”

Trevin Miller, who lives across the street, said the explosion woke him up and felt the blast on his “insides.”

Yasir Abdalrahman, a worshipper at the mosque, said the explosion was “unimaginable.”

“We came to this country for the same reason everyone else came here: freedom to worship,” Abdalrahman said. “And that freedom is under threat. Every other American should be insulted by this.”

The mosque serves as a religious center and community organizing platform for Muslim activists and leaders in the area, according to the society. The group is offering a $10,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest or conviction.

A $10,000 reward also is being offered by the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR. The group said its national office is urging Islamic centers and mosques to step up security.

The local chapter’s civil rights director, Amir Malik, said the group hopes the reward will help authorities quickly apprehend the perpetrator of the “act of violence.”

“If a bias motive is proven, this attack would represent another in a long list of hate incidents targeting Islamic institutions nationwide in recent months,” Malik said.

Fox News said Saturday that it has suspended Eric Bolling, the co-host of its late-afternoon news program “The Specialists,” while it investigates allegations he sent a lewd photo to co-workers.

A network spokesperson confirmed Bolling’s suspension and investigation in an email.

News of the suspension came one day after a Huff Post report relying on anonymous sources stated Bolling had sent a lewd photo to at least three female colleagues at Fox New and Fox Business.

“The anonymous, uncorroborated claims are untrue and terribly unfair,” Bolling’s attorney Michael J. Bowe wrote in an email. “We intend to fully cooperate with the investigation so that it can be concluded and Eric can return to work as quickly as possible.”

Bolling is the best-known personality on “The Specialists,” a program that airs weekdays at 5 p.m. EDT. The show replaced the network’s series “The Five” in April. He also hosts the weekend show “Cashin’ In.”

He joined Fox News in 2008 after working as a commodities trader, according to his bio on the network’s website.

Bolling has been a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump. In a March op-ed, he accused House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and establishment Republicans of betraying the president with their version of a plan to overhaul the nation’s health system.

The suspension is the latest in a string of sexual harassment complaints against personalities who appear on Fox News and its business network. In July, Fox Business Network host Charles Payne was suspended after the Los Angeles Times reported using anonymous sources that he harassed a female political analyst.

Payne remains suspension while an investigation into the allegations continues.

Other harassment allegations have been leveled against Fox News’ former star, Bill O’Reilly, who was fired in April after several women reported being harassed by the host.

The network’s founding leader Roger Ailes resigned in July 2016 because of harassment allegations. He died in May after a fall at his home.

The economic prosperity of the 1920s ended with an economic disaster. We have come to refer to that disaster as the Great Depression.

During the economic boom of the Roaring Twenties, the traditional values of rural America were challenged by the Jazz Age, symbolized by women smoking, drinking, and wearing short skirts. The average American was busy buying automobiles and household appliances and speculating in the stock market, where big money could be made. Those appliances were bought on credit, however. Although businesses had made huge gains — 65 percent — from the mechanization of manufacturing, the average worker’s wages had only increased 8 percent.

The imbalance between the rich and the poor, with 0.1 percent of society earning the same total income as 42 percent, combined with the production of more and more goods and rising personal debt, could not be sustained. On Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed, triggering the Great Depression, the worst economic collapse in the history of the modern industrial world. It spread from the United States to the rest of the world, lasting from the end of 1929 until the early 1940s. With banks failing and businesses closing, more than 15 million Americans (one-quarter of the workforce) became unemployed. Millions would be jolted out of the AMERICAN DREAM as they faced the realities of widespread poverty.

By 1933 production in American factories and plants had fallen, thousands of banks, with no money to lend and no cash on hand, closed their doors.In the end, millions of American workers found themselves without work and without even the hope of work. As people looked into the future and so only more hardship to come, hope began to fade. The Depression would jolt many out of the American Dream forcing them to look at the realities of widespread poverty.
Incredible poverty forced people and families onto the streets. Eventually, these people would gather together in huge tent communities known as “Hoovervilles”.

The entire nation suffered during the Great Depression that followed in the wake of the 1929 Stock Market Crash. But each part of the country was affected in different ways.

The economic crisis combined with a long drought that actually turned New Mexico into part of the Dust Bowl. A 1937 dust storm was so massive that it stretched a mile wide and 1500 feet high.

One of the hardest hit segments of the New Mexico economy during the depression was farming. In 1931, the state’s most important crops were worth only about half of their 1929 value. Dry farmers were especially devastated as they suffered from both continually high operating costs and a prolonged drought that dried up portions of New Mexico so badly that they became part of the Dust Bowl.

From Oklahoma to eastern New Mexico, winds picked up the dry topsoil, forming great clouds of dust so thick that it filled the air. On May 28, 1937, one dust cloud, or “black roller, ” measuring fifteen hundred feet high and a mile across, descended upon the farming and ranching community of Clayton, New Mexico. The dust blew for hours and was so thick that electric lights could not be seen across the street. Everywhere they hit, the dust storms killed livestock and destroyed crops. In the Estancia Valley entire crops of pinto beans were killed, and that once productive area was transformed into what author John L. Sinclair has called “the valley of broken hearts.”

In all parts of New Mexico, farmland dropped in value until it bottomed out at an average of $4.95 an acre, the lowest value per acre of land in the United States. Many New Mexico farmers had few or no crops to sell and eventually, they were forced to sell their land contributing in the process to the overall decline in farmland values.

THE DUST BOWL – WHAT WAS IT?

And it wasn’t just farmers who were affected. During the 1920s, New Mexico was already one of the poorest states and the crash only made a bad situation worse, especially in rural areas. The New Deal projects helped many return to work. However, the 1930s were a tough decade for most New Mexicans.

The depression also hurt New Mexico’s cattle ranchers, for they suffered from both drought and a shrinking marketplace. As grasslands dried up, they raised fewer cattle; and as the demand for beef declined, so did the value of the cattle on New Mexico’s rangelands. Like the farmers, many ranchers fell behind in their taxes and were forced to sell their land, which was bought by large ranchers.

Agriculture’s ailing economic condition had a particularly harsh effect on New Mexico, for the state was still primarily rural during the 1930’s, with most of its people employed in raising crops and livestock. Yet farmers and ranchers were not the only ones to appear on the list of those devastated by depressed economic conditions. Indeed, high on the list were the miners, who watched their industry continue the downward slide that had begun in the 1920’s. Many mines became the property of larger companies when conditions forced many of the smaller companies out of business. The oil industry, however, remained a bright spot in an otherwise bleak economic picture, for increased oil production provided needed tax money to the state. Tourism also received a boost when the federal government released some federal relief money to create new state parks.

DEPORTATIONS:

It wasn’t all about finding work though. For some, it was about finding a way to stay within the United States. One almost forgotten part of the depression era was the deportation of many citizens, who just happened to be of Mexican ancestry. This video outlines the deportation program:

During the 1930s and into the 1940s, up to 2 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were deported or expelled from cities and towns across the U.S. and shipped to Mexico. According to some estimates, more than half of these people were U.S. citizens, born in the United States.

It’s a largely forgotten chapter in history that Francisco Balderrama, a California State University historian, documented in Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. He co-wrote that book with the late historian Raymond Rodriguez.

“There was a perception in the United States that Mexicans are Mexicans,” Balderrama said. “Whether they were American citizens, or whether they were Mexican nationals, in the American mind — that is, in the mind of government officials, in the mind of industry leaders — they’re all Mexicans. So ship them home.”

It was the Great Depression, when up to a quarter of Americans were unemployed and many believed that Mexicans were taking scarce jobs. In response, federal, state and local officials launched so-called “repatriation” campaigns. They held raids in workplaces and in public places, rounded up Mexicans and Mexican-Americans alike, and deported them. The most famous of these was in downtown Los Angeles’ Placita Olvera in 1931.

Balderrama says these raids were intended to spread fear throughout Mexican barrios and pressure Mexicans and Mexican-Americans to leave on their own. In many cases, they succeeded.

Where they didn’t, government officials often used coercion to get rid of Mexican-Americans who were U.S. citizens. In Los Angeles, it was standard practice for county social workers to tell those receiving public assistance that they would lose it, and that they would be better off in Mexico. Those social workers would then get tickets for families to travel to Mexico. According to Balderrama’s research, one-third of LA’s Mexican population was expelled between 1929 and 1944 as a result of these practices.

Balderrama says these family separations remain a lasting legacy of the mass deportations of that era. Despite claims by officials at the time that deporting U.S.-born children — along with their immigrant parents — would keep families together, many families were destroyed.

Esteban Torres was a toddler when his father, a Mexican immigrant, was caught up in a workplace roundup at an Arizona copper mine in the mid-1930s. “My mother, like other wives, waited for the husbands to come home from the mine. But he didn’t come home,” Torres recalled in a recent interview. He now lives east of Los Angeles. “I was 3 years old. My brother was 2 years old. And we never saw my father again.”

Torres’ mother suspected that his father had been targeted because of his efforts to organize miners. That led Esteban Torres to a lifelong involvement with organized labor. He was eventually elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and served there from 1983 to 1999.

Today, Torres serves on the board of La Plaza de Cultura y Artes in Los Angeles, a Mexican-American cultural center. In front of it stands a memorial that the state of California dedicated in 2012, apologizing to the hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens who were illegally deported or expelled during the Depression.

NEW ERA
Taking office in March 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal relief measures were sent to Congress and within months, most of the acts the president wanted were passed. New Mexicans welcomed New Deal programs of all kinds. Some of the New Deal programs, such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA), put people to work in varying jobs: writers, artists, and musicians practiced their trades as employees of WPA projects, while others who worked for the WPA built schools and other public buildings, including the library and the administration building at the University of New Mexico. By 1936 more than thirteen thousand New Mexicans had found jobs through this program.

New Mexico had always had its share of those who were creative. For the artist, the collapse of the stock market equated the collapse of the art market: art collectors and patrons, now without stock dividend income that provided the means for the acquisition of ‘luxury’ items, could not purchase art. The romance of the ‘starving artist’ took on urgent and less than romantic connotation – and warning.

The PWAP was the first federally funded art program under the Civil Works Administration (CWA) – a New Deal work-relief program created by President Roosevelt to alleviate the economic job crisis. In time, all the federal art projects have come to be generically referred to as “WPA Art, ” (Works Progress Administration, or WPA).

The CWA was administered by socially conscious Harry Hopkins whose heartfelt belief was that “artists have to eat like other people.” The PWAP started in December 1933 and continued until June 1934, and was the brainchild of artist George Biddle, a former schoolmate of President Roosevelt at Groton and Harvard. An advocate of mural art in America, Biddle had studied with the Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera, and it was his belief that Rivera and others gave voice to the social ideals of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 through their vivid, colorful murals. It would follow, he believed, that murals painted by American artists in the United States would be appropriate vehicles for the expression of the ideals of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Murals painted by Biddle and New Mexico’s Emil Bisttram may be seen today in the Department of Justice Building in Washington DC.

Between 1933 – 1943, in the depth of the depression, 167 known artists lived in New Mexico, all struggling to sell art in a time when many Americans had little money available even for necessities. The New Deal’s Works Progress Administration Art Project provided an opportunity for artists to create artwork for public buildings, allowing them to remain independent, support their families, and enrich and enhance the community.

The following New Mexico artists were among the many employed in WPA projects: Pablita Velarde, Maria Martinez, Ila McAfee, Gerald Cassidy, Will Shuster, Lloyd Moylan, Gisella Loeffler, Eliseo Rodriguez, Kenneth Adams, Fremont F. Ellis and Peter Hurd. The area coordinator of the WPA’s Public Works of Art Project was woodblock printer, painter, and marionette-maker Gustave Baumann, a leading member of the Santa Fe art community. More than 65 murals with varied subject materials were created in New Mexico during the Depression. In addition to these murals, the WPA sponsored more than 650 paintings, ten sculptural pieces, and numerous indigenous Hispanic Native American crafts.

President Roosevelt appointed John Collier as Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1933 – 1945). Collier took full advantage of New Deal funds to promote Indian arts and crafts, increase employment, improve infrastructure on reservations, and construct schools. Collier was an idealist who struggled to reform federal Indian policy during his twelve-year term. Years earlier, during a 1920 visit to his close friend, Taos resident and art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan, he had embraced Pueblo Indian culture as offering nothing less than salvation from the ills of Western Civilization.

The headquarters of the Indian Division was at Santa Fe Indian School, where the artists took room and board. Superintendent Chester E. Faris endeavored to hire Indian artists and craftsmen and promote Indian arts as a profession that would permit students to continue living at home if they desired. The students worked under the direction of painting teacher Dorothy Dunn and crafts teacher Mabel Morrow. The artists included Pablita Velarde (Santa Clara) and Andy Tsinajinnie (Navajo), both about 16 years old at the time. They worked with established artists Velino Shije Herrera (Zia), Tonita Pena (San Ildefonso), Emiliano Abeyta (San Juan), Tony Archuleta (Taos), Jack Hokeah (Kiowa), and Calvin Tyndall (Omaha).

Velarde recalled that at SFIS (Santa Fe Indian School), Tonita Pena became her mentor. “Tonita was really a help to me in my early years at the Indian school…..She was staying at the girls’ dorm. That’s how we got acquainted. She talked Tewa, and she used to tease and laugh and joke in Indian, and that was fun. Then she would be sitting in her room in the evening, just painting for herself, and I’d watch her and talk to her.” These conversations convinced Velarde that she could overcome the difficulties of being both a Pueblo woman and an artist.

Six Navajo weavers came to the school, bringing their own wool and yarn. The school furnished additional wool, yarn, and dyes and paid each weaver a salary of $14.85 per person per week plus room and board. The weavers completed 12 rugs ranging in size from 3 ft. by 4 ft. to 4 ft. by 5 ft. 5 in. The weavers were Nellie Cowboy, Mrs. John Jim, Elizabeth Pablo, Mary Phillips, Sallie Kinlichini, and Bah Smith.

The Indian participants in the Public Works of Art Project included the leading Indian painters, potters, and sculptors of the century who created work of significant artistic and historical value under the federal sponsorship. PWAP helped establish Santa Fe as a center of Indian art patronage and Santa Fe Indian School as an institution that fostered both traditional and innovative arts.

As Franklin Roosevelt and the government were dealing with an ailing economy on one front, they were being pulled into fighting a world war on the other.

The seven-year Republican quest to kill Obamacare, a major campaign vow by President Donald Trump, lay in ruins on Friday after the Senate failed to dismantle the health care law, with congressional leaders now planning to move on to other matters.

John McCain, the maverick 80-year-old senator, and 2008 Republican presidential nominee cast the deciding vote in the dramatic early-morning showdown on the Senate floor as a bill to repeal key elements of Obamacare was defeated, 51-49.

McCain, who flew back from Arizona this week after being diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer, joined fellow Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski in voting with Senate Democrats who were unified against the legislation.

“It’s time to move on,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose reputation as a master strategist was diminished, said on the Senate floor after the vote that unfolded at roughly 1:30 a.m. (0530 GMT).

While House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said his fellow Republicans should not give up trying on health care, he pointed to other pressing issues that needed attention, including major tax-cut legislation sought by Trump.

“We have so much work still to do, and the House will continue to focus on issues that are important to the American people. At the top of that list is cutting taxes for middle-class families and fixing our broken tax code,” Ryan said in a statement.

The Senate’s healthcare failure called into question the Republican Party’s basic ability to govern even as it controls the White House, Senate and House of Representatives.

Trump has not had a major legislative victory after more than six months in office. He had promised to get major health care legislation, tax cuts and a boost in infrastructure spending through Congress in short order.

Also on the legislative agenda are spending bills for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 to avoid a government shutdown and raising the U.S. debt limit.

While Ryan was able to secure House passage of a comprehensive bill to gut Obamacare in May, McConnell earlier in the week was unable to win passage of similarly broad health care legislation amid intraparty squabbling and competing demands by hard-line conservatives and moderates. In the middle-of-the-night vote, he failed to get even a stripped-down, so-called skinny bill over the finish line.

One person was killed and seven others injured, including three critically, Wednesday evening when they were ejected from a ride at the Ohio State Fair.

Video posted online appears to show part of the Fire Ball ride detaching before people drop out of their seats to the ground. Their names have not been released.

Michael Vartorella, who is in charge of inspectors for the state Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for safety checks, said the Fire Ball and all the rides had been inspected several times before being certified to operate.

Vartorella told reporters, “My grandchildren ride this equipment.” He said that the inspectors “don’t rush” through the checks and that the fair opened for business Wednesday without 11 rides that hadn’t passed inspections. Some of them were approved during the day.

Gov. John Kasich has ordered all rides at the fair shut down until they can be inspected again.

“On its website, Amusements of America says that since its debut in 2002, the Fire Ball has become ‘one of the most popular thrill rides on the AOA Midway.’ The company description of the ride says it swings riders 40 feet above the midway while spinning them at 13 revolutions per minute.”

Republicans in the U.S. Senate fell short again on Wednesday in their effort to end Obamacare, rejecting a measure to repeal large portions of President Barack Obama’s signature law that has provided health insurance to millions of Americans.

But Republican Senate leaders, struggling to keep a seven-year-old promise to unravel the law, already were trying to gain support for a slimmed-down “skinny” bill that would throw the issue to a Senate-House of Representatives negotiating committee.

Republican senators said they were still determining what would be in the skinny repeal, which could simply eliminate mandates requiring individuals and employers to obtain or provide health insurance, and abolish a tax on medical device manufacturers.

Senator John Thune, the No. 3 Senate Republican, said the party was trying to “figure out what the traffic will bear, in terms of getting 50 of our members to vote for things that will repeal as much of Obamacare as possible.”

Republicans hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate.

Any Senate legislation would be enough to kick the issue to a special negotiating committee with the House, which passed its own version in May. If that panel can agree on a new bill, the full House and Senate would again have to approve the legislation – a process that could last for months.

“I think people would look at it not necessarily based on its content, but as a forcing mechanism to cause the two sides of the building to try to solve it together,” Republican Senator Bob Corker said. “That’s going to be the last chance.”

White House press secretary Sean Spicer resigned Friday morning, capping off a rollercoaster six-month tenure as the chief spokesman for an administration besieged by a steady drumbeat of controversy.

Newly-minted communications director Anthony Scaramucci announced that principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will take over as press secretary.

President Donald Trump wished Spicer well in a statement Sanders delivered from the White House briefing room and noted Spicer’s “great television ratings” during his time behind the podium. Trump also called Scaramucci “an important addition to this administration” in a statement also read by Sanders.

Spicer’s resignation came after Scaramucci, a New York financier and former Trump campaign fundraiser, accepted the new job, a move Spicer adamantly opposed, multiple sources said. His resignation came in spite of Trump’s request that he remain in this position, a White House official and top GOP advisers said.

The resignation marked the end of one of the most tumultuous tenures for a White House press secretary, one that saw Spicer repeatedly undermined in his role as the White House’s public-facing spokesman by the President’s own public statements and tweets.

O.J. Simpson was granted parole Thursday after more than eight years in prison for a Las Vegas hotel-room heist, successfully making his case for freedom in a nationally televised hearing that reflected America’s enduring fascination with the former football star.

Simpson, 70, could be released as early as Oct. 1. By then, he will have served the minimum of his nine-to-33-year armed-robbery sentence for a bungled attempt to snatch sports memorabilia and other mementos he claimed had been stolen from him.

All four parole commissioners who conducted the hearing voted for his release after about a half-hour of deliberations. They cited, among other things, the low risk he might commit another crime, his community support and his release plans, which include moving to Florida.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Simpson said quietly as he buried his head on his chest with relief. As he rose from his seat to return to his prison cell, he exhaled deeply.

Then, as he was led down a hall, the Hall of Fame athlete and one-time murder defendant in the 1995 “Trial of the Century” raised his hands over his head in a victory gesture and said: “Oh, God, oh!”

Simpson’s sister, Shirley Baker, wept and hugged Simpson’s 48-year-old daughter Arnelle, who held a hand over her mouth.

During the more than hour-long hearing, Simpson forcefully insisted – as he has all along – that he was only trying to retrieve items that belonged to him and never meant to hurt anyone. He said he never pointed a gun at anyone nor made any threats during the holdup of two sports memorabilia dealers.

“I’m sorry it happened, I’m sorry, Nevada,” he told the board. “I thought I was glad to get my stuff back, but it just wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth it, and I’m sorry.”

Inmate No. 1027820 made his plea for freedom in a stark hearing room at the Lovelock Correctional Center in rural Nevada as the parole commissioners questioned him via video from Carson City, a two-hour drive away.

Gray-haired but looking trimmer than he has in recent years, Simpson walked briskly into the hearing room in jeans, a light-blue prison-issue shirt and sneakers. He chuckled at one point as the parole board chairwoman mistakenly gave his age as 90.

Simpson was widely expected to win parole, given similar cases and his good behavior behind bars. His defenders have argued, too, that his sentence was out of proportion to the crime and that he was being punished for the two murders he was acquitted of in Los Angeles in 1995, the stabbings of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

Before the hearing concluded, one of the dealers Simpson robbed, Bruce Fromong, said the former football great never pointed a gun at him during the confrontation, adding that it was one of Simpson’s accomplices. Fromong said Simpson deserved to be released so he can be with his children.

“He is a good man. He made a mistake,” Fromong said, adding the two remain friends.

Arnelle Simpson, the eldest of Simpson’s four children, also testified on his behalf, saying, “We recognize that he is not the perfect man.” But she said he has been “a perfect inmate, following all the rules and making the best of the situation.”

“We just want him to come home, we really do,” she said.

Simpson said that he has spent his time in prison mentoring fellow inmates, often keeping them out of trouble, and believes he has become a better person during those years.

“I’ve done my time. I’ve done it as well and respectfully as I think anybody can,” he told the board.

Asked if he was confident he could stay out of trouble if released, Simpson replied that he learned a lot from an alternative-to-violence course he took in prison and that in any case he has always gotten along well with people.

“I’ve basically spent a conflict-free life, you know,” he said – a remark that lit up social media with sarcastic comments about the murder case and a raft of allegations he abused his wife.

Several major TV networks and cable channels – including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, MSNBC and ESPN – carried the proceedings live, just as some of them did two decades ago during the Ford Bronco chase that ended in Simpson’s arrest, and again when the jury in the murder case came back with its verdict.

Simpson said if released he plans to return to Florida, where he was living before his incarceration.

“I could easily stay in Nevada, but I don’t think you guys want me here,” he joked at one point.

“No comment, sir,” one of the parole board members said.

Authorities must still work out the details of Simpson’s release, including where he will live and what rules he must follow.

An electrifying running back dubbed “The Juice,” Simpson won the Heisman Trophy as the nation’s best college football player in 1968 and went on to become one of the NFL’s all-time greats.

The handsome and charismatic athlete was also a “Monday Night Football” commentator, sprinted through airports in Hertz rental-car commercials and built a Hollywood career with roles in the “Naked Gun” comedies and other movies.

All of that came crashing down with his arrest in the 1994 slayings and his trial, a gavel-to-gavel live-TV sensation that transfixed viewers with its testimony about the bloody glove that didn’t fit and stirred furious debate over racist police, celebrity justice and cameras in the courtroom.

Last year, the case proved to be compelling TV all over again with the ESPN documentary “O.J.: Made in America” and the award-winning FX miniseries “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.”

In 1997, Simpson was found liable in civil court for the two killings and ordered to pay $33.5 million to survivors, including his children and the Goldman family.

Then a decade later, he and five accomplices – two with guns – stormed a hotel room and seized photos, plaques and signed balls, some of which never belonged to Simpson.

Simpson was convicted in 2008, and the long prison sentence brought a measure of satisfaction to some of those who thought he got away with murder.